Agenda and minutes

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

None

To approve & sign the Notes of the previous meeting(s) as a correct record.

Approved

None

Keith Coxon - Performance and Projects Manager

·          Keith Coxon – Performance and Projects Manager came to brief the Panel on the Recycling and Landfill Annual Performance Monitoring Report.

·         The service has met and improved on its statutory waste targets the last 12 months being 4.17% up on last year

·         The Local Government Data in relation to municipal waste performance is slightly misleading. As Swansea Council do not burn waste (it is too expensive and we have available landfill), it cannot benefit from ash being recycled and therefore counted against its recycling target. Swansea Council are still meeting their recycling target in spite of this

·         The Landfill Performance indicator in the Local Government Performance Bulletin places Swansea as 22/22 – again this is because Swansea do not burn waste so 100% goes to landfill

·         There are currently some issues around the recycling of wood. Paint, preserver etc on the wood may impact how it is recycled

·         There are no incineration plants in South West Wales. There is one in Cardiff but Swansea cannot access it – Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion send their rubbish to Sweden to incinerate

·         Welsh Government are keen to have an incineration plant in in South West Wales – Keith Coxon is scoping out the appetite for burning and conducting research into this

·         There is some discussion around nappies and continence waste having allocated bags (purple and yellow) so this waste is not included in the black bag allocation

·         There has been a slight increase in the amount of fly tipping since the removal of residual skips but nowhere near as much as the amount of rubbish which was disposed of in the skips initially

·         Council are trying to encourage people who don’t recycle very much/at all but this isn’t easy

·         Developing recycling within Student areas can be problematic but the Authority are working with the university and landlords to improve matters but the transitional nature of students makes this difficult

·         The issue with hard and soft plastics is that soft plastics were preventing effective sorting by machines. The soft plastics needed to be sorted down even further (e.g. by polymer) and the cost of staffing this manually is prohibitively expensive. Looking at other options currently

·         The department are working with the Planning Department to try and ensure there are recycling facilities in HMOs at the planning stage

·         Should be looking to the cause of these issues (overuse of soft plastics and the manufacturers/Landlords not taking responsibility)

Verbal Overview

Ben Smith - Head of Financial Services & Service Centre

·         Sarah Willis and Amanda Thomas attended on Ben Smiths behalf

·         Didn’t go into detail as it had been presented to Council the previous week

·         Explored why there is a need for a midyear budget statement as well as a Quarter 2 report

·         The Quarter 2 report looks back but the midyear budget statement also looks ahead and more in depth

Ben Smith - Head of Financial Services & Service Centre

·         Again the report had been to Council the week before so the Panel had had time to peruse the issues

·         The report gave rise to some questions which will be included in the letter